>"This game is going to be a nautical/spacefaring game. Your characters had better be really good at sailing/space-sailing!"
>everyone sinks character resources to be good at sailing/space-sailing
>ship is used as a plot device to get from Land/Planet A to Land/Planet B anyway, because time aboard a ship is boring except for the occasional "Something is going wrong with the ship" side quest
>all those character resources are wasted
Why does this happen every time, and how can it be avoided?
>>47531704
Make them have their own ships, and make them shipgirls
>>47531704
Your GM is shit. Top off my head for ship to ship scenarios:
>Not fighting space pirates in asteroid belts
>Not salvaging delirect spaceship wrecks for loot
>Not escorting VIPs through pirate space
>>47531704
Anything that is requisite / part of the premise of the campaign should be handed out for free. Don't make a game entirely about playing ghosts and then force the players to pay "out of pocket" to be ghosts, for example.
>>47531954
This. I gave a free rank in Sailing to everyone in my WFRP group so that they could operate their own boat without having to side-track into careers that they would otherwise be disinterested in.
>>47531954
I second. Actually, I feel pretty much every PC sheet should come with some basics: local lore and language (if applicable), basic skills, maybe a specific trade... Just a DM package bonus to keep things moving smoothly, with possibly a supplementary utility skill thrown in that compliments their class.
Basically, campaign direction and focus nets you an easy set of free basic skills to help you not operate like a retard because someone in that setting probably wouldn't just start acting like a retard for no reason. Also maybe an extra bonus skill per class because I'm nice like that and like to throw in utility.
>>47531704
Have ships be operated by crews mainly made up of sentient animated lengths of rope, as they all should be in any fantasy setting.
>sailing game
>sailing skill is free/NPC crew covers the hard parts
>no one puts points into sailing
>or even swimming
true story, even if tangental.
>>47531704
usually, the reasons come down to unimaginative GMs and/or a system that makes it interesting for more than one or two characters to be manning a ship. in spacefaring games there's often no reason why the captain, navigator and gunner aren't all one guy, and then who else is responsible for making the ship do things? even in sailing settings, the gunner and helmsman have something to do in a naval confrontation, but who in the party wants to roll to see if they properly pull lines and trim sails? best case, every character mans a cannon, but then everyone with no ranged skill feels stupid. there are solutions to these problems, but usually both the GM and the system have to accomodate them.
>>47532369
It should probably be noted that D&D basically has NO meaningful vehicle rules to speak of
>>47532594
Use pathfinder then. They have a whole module for pirating and a splat on how to run ships.
>>47532655
Those rules are also complete shit even BEFORE you consider that they get totally obsoleted by casters anyway.
>>47531954
Like the traveller skill bundles for the group.
tl;dr: after characters are made and you know what the group looks like, there's an array of skill bundles you can choose from as a group. These are things like "free trader" [some social and ship-operation skills], "mercenary" [some tactics and weaponskills, along with ancilliary equipment operation], and so on.
This is chosen, then the players get to decide how to split the skills up, generally doling them out relatively evenly in my experience.
>>47531704
>it's a superhero game
>the players don't want to discuss their character concepts or call dibs on a power, they all create characters blind
>we all show up with brick heroes, every character in the party has 4 points of damage resistance
>every nameless thug now has a laser gun with +4 damage, otherwise they couldn't even pretend to be a threat to any of us
>all that starting XP wasted
Have a GM with actual experience as a professional mariner.
>>47533231
Why don't the enemies have non-damaging powers?
That seems like a shitty GM.
>>47531704
Our group has yet to find a perfect formula for naval gameplay, partly out of inexperience with ships and partly out of misplaced priorities.
We tend to to prefer boats as a brief bottle episode, like a faster version of Berserk. Give the characters a bit of time to interact in a close environment they don't understand, get in some hot water, reach dry land, move on. That way it mitigates the downsides of ships feeling "bare"in terms of options.
For long-term gameplay I'd imagine the players would need more than passing knowledge of sailing, and ideally some patience for nitty-gritty stuff. Ultimately, the bigger the ship, the better--the possibility of dangerous sea monsters, rival ships, turbulent storms and the like would mesh really nicely with mutiny and internal politicking.
That way you can essentially treat a boat as a small city--and the dry land as the bottle episode diversions.
>>47531704
I've had some games with a dedicated Captain of the vessel and it didn't go well due to everybody else being kinda stuck twiddling thumbs while the captain does all the naval combat.
(Then reverse was happening when we set anchor and two rogueish types go out sneaking and the captain snores on the ship.)
>>47532083
check out Burning Wheel, you build your character by navigating them through various life-tracks.
>>47532197
sentient items are almost always sassy bitches
>>47531903
Fuck off, boatshit
